Just around Midnight : Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination / Jack Hamilton.
Hamilton, Jack, author.
2017
ML3534 .H336 2016
Available Online

Linked e-resources

Linked Resource Online Access

Details

Title Just around Midnight : Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination / Jack Hamilton.
Author Hamilton, Jack, author.
ISBN 9780674973541
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674973541
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2017]
Copyright ©2016
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (320 p.) : 3 halftones, 5 music illustrations
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674973541 doi
Call Number ML3534 .H336 2016
Dewey Decimal Classification 781.6609/046
Summary By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become "white"? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic-and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of "authenticity" have blinded us to rock's inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)
In Harvard University Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction: Dreams and Nightmares
1. Darkness at the Break of Noon
2. The White Atlantic
3. "Friends Across the Sea"
4. "Being Good isn't Always Easy"
5. House Burning Down
6. Just Around Midnight
Notes
Acknowledgments
Credits
Index

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export